1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to collation and/or sorting of groups of articles. In particular, this invention relates to shuffling and sorting apparatus for providing randomly collated groups of articles and/or collated groups of articles according to a predetermined order.
This invention can be utilised to collate and sort groups of articles which have distinguishing characteristics which can be machine identified. However it has particular relevance to shuffling and sorting playing cards and reference will be made hereinafter to such application by way of illustration of the invention.
2. Background of the Invention
In the gaming industry many packs of cards are utilised and it is necessary to shuffle one or more decks of cards for game use and/or after each game to sort the cards into one or more packs for re-use either in a specific order or at least into a pack of cards which is complete. At present this is achieved manually.